Colombian journalist dies after being in police custody

Bogotá, November 30, 2012--Top Colombian police
officials must conduct an intensive investigation into the actions of local
police during their arrest of freelance journalist Guillermo Quiroz Delgado,
who died Tuesday night, seven days after he was hospitalized for injuries suffered
while in custody, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Quiroz, 31, lapsed into a coma and died of a
heart attack in the María Reina clinic in Sincelejo, according to news
reports. He was a part-time journalist for Notisabanas,
a nightly cable TV news program in Sincelejo, the capital of northern Sucre
department, and also contributed to the El
Meridiano daily newspaper in Montería, the capital of neighboring Córdoba
department.

Police detained Quiroz and impounded his
motorcycle while he was covering a protest
on November 20 in the town of San Pedro, where residents were demonstrating
against a local natural gas company in connection with its perceived reluctance
to hire local workers, according to Edgardo Ochoa, an editor and producer at
Notisabanas. Police told Quiroz he lacked the proper insurance papers for his
motorcycle, Ochoa said.

Quiroz told Notisabanas in an interview the next day
that officers put him on a police truck. Then, he said, "A policeman grabbed
me, beat me, and threw me from the moving vehicle." The interview was the last
one Quiroz gave before he died, Ochoa said. The journalist, whose head appears
battered and bloody in the video, was vomiting blood during the interview,
Ochoa told CPJ.

News accounts reported
that Col. Salvador Gutiérrez, chief of the Colombian National Police in Sucre
department, initially said that
Quiroz had been detained after getting into a fight with a police officer and
that he had fallen
off the police truck. But National Police Inspector Gen. Santiago Parra
announced today that three officers were being suspended while the case was
being investigated, according to news
reports.

Quiroz said police told him he was targeted
because of his news coverage, according to Ochoa.

Ochoa told CPJ that Quiroz had upset local
authorities recently by reporting on the theft of cattle that were later found
on a farm owned by a former San Pedro politician. Ochoa said that Quiroz had
also reported on a case of police brutality in San Pedro. He said Quiroz had
received a death threat on his cellphone in October and had traveled from San
Pedro to Sucre to report the threat to the police and to the local office of
the Attorney General.

"The abuse that Guillermo Quiroz Delgado
described is shocking and demands an independent, high-level investigation,"
said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas, from New
York. "The possibility that Quiroz was mistreated in retaliation for his work
underscores the seriousness of this case and the necessity that authorities
bring those responsible to justice."

At Quiroz' burial Thursday, protesters clashed
with police who used tear gas and water cannons to repel them, according to news
reports. Four police officers and 50 civilians were injured, the reports
said.

While journalist killings have decreased in Colombia in
recent years, journalists have faced resurgent
violence from illegal armed groups in 2012.

For more data and analysis on Colombia, visit
CPJ's Colombia page here.